In recent years, chocolate manufacturing company is forced to not only develop a new product, but also attempt to reduce production costs by improving the productivity due to an intensification of intercompany competition from globalization, etc.
When industrially manufacturing large amount of chocolate, molten chocolate liquor is poured into a mold, and then chocolate is demolded after cooling and solidification. Subsequently, hardness of chocolate is increased by stabilizing fat crystal included in chocolate through aging period of about 5 to 7 days at about 20° C., and than it is distributed. An increase in solidification speed, demolding speed and crystal stabilization speed leads to reduce the time required between the production and distribution and can contribute to cost reduction by improving productivity of the chocolate manufacturer. Especially, reducing the aging period which requires long periods of time in the chocolate production is earnest desire for the chocolate manufacturer because it can greatly contribute directly to an improvement of productivity. Meanwhile, competitiveness is deteriorated if chocolate quality is deteriorated by improving the productivity thereof. It is like putting the cart before the horse. That is, it is necessary to maintain a hardness of breaking comfortably (snappiness) and a meltability in the mouth which meets melting in the mouth with expressing a taste at appropriate speed within an acceptable range. When a molten chocolate liquor is directly cooled and solidified, stable hardness cannot be obtained, for example, it is not solidified immediately or it cannot be demolded. Therefore, tempering process is generally essential before the solidification in order to improve solidification speed and demolding speed from mold. The tempering process is carried out for the purpose of making a small amount stable (V-type) crystal in oil-and-fat. As the tempering process, a process including melting oil-and-fat in the chocolate at 45 to 50° C., cooling to 28 to 29° C., and then raising the temperature to 30 to 32° C. by using a tempering apparatus (non-Patent Document 1) or a process including adding triglyceride having a crystal similar to stable crystal of cocoa butter having specific fatty acid composition to a chocolate liquor as shown in Patent Document 1 is generally known.
The case of generating appropriate amount of stabilized crystal in oil-and-fat is called as well-tempered and the case of generating large amount of stabilized crystal is called as over-tempered. In the case of over-tempered, solidification speed, demolding speed and crystal stabilization speed are faster than the case of well-tempered, however, workability of filling to mold and coating process becomes low due to an rapidly increase of viscosity. Meanwhile, in the case of well-tempered, workability is good, but solidification speed, demolding speed and crystal stabilization speed are slightly slow. Therefore, the following attempt for reforming an oil-and-fat composition and physical property of an oil-and-fat composition for chocolate has been made in order to further improve productivity.
As an attempt for improving an oil-and-fat composition, a method for obtaining good happiness, meltability in the mouth and workability by using a fractionated sal fat as a cacao butter alternative including 0.4 wt % or less of triglyceride containing dihydroxy stearic acid (DHS-TG) and 85 wt % or more of 1,3-disaturated-2-unsaturated triglyceride (SUS) to chocolate is disclosed (Patent Document 2). However, triglyceride components such as StOA and AOA which are included in sal fat at large content decrease snapiness by inhibiting crystallization or packing of POP, POSt and StOSt components which are major component of cacao butter and may deteriorate meltability in the mouth because components such as AOA has relatively higher melting point compared to cacao butter. Therefore, further improvement has been required. (Where, St represents stearic acid, P represents palmitic acid, A represents arachidic acid and O represents oleic acid, respectively.)
In addition, an attempt for improving a tempering property and demolding speed by improving crystal stabilization speed by adding an oil-soluble material which is liquid state at 25° C. to hard butter having low iodine value and large amount of 2-unsaturated-1,3-disaturated triglyceride components is disclosed (Patent Document 3). However, problems such as softening of feeling after bite and deterioration of snappiness may be occurred. Therefore, further improvement has been required.